Morphological Typology - Morphological Typology in Reality

Morphological Typology in Reality

Each of the types above are idealizations; they do not exist in a pure state in reality. Although they generally fit best into one category, all languages are mixed types. English is not analytic, but it is more analytic than Spanish, which is itself much more analytic than Latin. Chinese is the usual model of analytic languages, but it does have some bound morphemes. Japanese is highly synthetic in its verbs, but clearly analytic in its nouns. Because of that, the scale above is continuous and relative, not absolute. It is difficult to classify a language as absolutely analytic or synthetic, as a language could be described as more synthetic than Chinese, but less synthetic than Korean.